When my attention was first attracted to the work of this school, so long as my mind was content to skim over the surface of an unknown world, so immeasurably distant from us, and whilst flitting too rapidly over it to be able to distinguish any of its features, it presented itself to me as a creation of my heated imagination. Since then I have lived in that world of wonders, and I then grasped the fact that it was quite possible for this world to have been a reality. But to journey thither, even to live in this strange country, the only path to which is by induction, in company with Max Müller and Noiré, who, apparently, are its inhabitants, from the ease with which they move in it, is a totally different matter from explaining the methods of getting there, or describing the sojourn. I should have to draw information from various sources, and the scientific and hypothetical data connected therewith would require sorting and rearranging to make them assimilate more easily; these would present difficulties not readily surmounted.
How could a reasonable and speaking being come forth from that which had no reason and no language?
The earliest traditions are silent on the manner of man’s acquisition of his first ideas and his first words. But because a problem has not been solved, that is no reason for the assertion that it is insoluble, unless a refutation is at once demonstrable, as in the squaring of the circle. “If every one had abstained from striving to penetrate hidden things, no sciences would exist,” Noiré remarked. Newton might have said: “The facts that a stone falls and the planets move are known by actual experience, why search out the laws which produce these phenomena?” And the theory of gravitation would have been lacking. Lyell might have said: “We see that the crust of the earth is composed of several strata, why reckon the time required for their formation?” And there would have been no science of geology. Liebig might have said: “We see that clover grows and cattle prosper, why should the relation of cause and effect concern us?” And there would have been no organic chemistry. Adam Smith might have said: “We know by experience that valuable objects can be exchanged, and that their prices fluctuate, why should we study the cause of rise and fall?” And this chapter would have been missing from political economy.
No road presents itself to me by which to arrive in the midst of primitive humanity; of necessity, therefore, I have recourse to analogy, which, under the circumstances, is not the worst expedient.
When the Romans first encountered Germans, they were chiefly struck by the great stature, the blue eyes, and the light hair of this inimical race. Tacitus, in alluding to this fact, says that each German exactly resembled his fellow. Although we are familiar with the external appearance of various nations, yet if we found ourselves in the presence of a large number of negroes we should experience an analogous sensation, only by degrees should we distinguish one from the other. In an intensified degree primitive man must have had similar experiences when, first finding himself in a world of which he knew nothing, and of which he understood nothing, the consciousness of what he saw around him was making itself apparent. These early races learnt the meaning of the details of surrounding nature but slowly; their eyes followed the brilliant circle as it moved from one quarter of the heavens to the other; they noticed the fire which came whence they knew not; they heard the crash of thunder, reproduced by the echoes in the mountains synchronising with the devastations caused by the storm. If one man alone had witnessed these terrifying effects in nature, his reason would have tottered from fear; the stones and the herbs of the field could not share his agitation; the death of a man from terror would leave them unmoved. Happily man was not alone, all those around him shared his agitation, and the terror manifested itself on each by signs which each would understand instinctively. This period of semi-consciousness before the full awakening might have been a prolonged one, but physical sensations and necessities multiplied themselves, and were very various and imperative; action was indispensable if privations were to be avoided; and instinct came to their aid. The need of guarding themselves from the burning rays of the sun caused them to provide shelters by interlacing branches of trees; to protect themselves from cold they took the skins of wild beasts to throw over their shoulders; where natural caverns were insufficient for their wants they made themselves refuges in the sides of the mountains; they were forced to light and maintain fires; sharpen stones either for tools or for weapons of defence; the wants of one were the wants of all, and all gave themselves to the task of satisfying them. It is so evident that primitive activity must have been co-operative, that it outrages common sense to picture each man labouring by himself for himself alone. The mental phenomenon known as intention, was the common property of all; the mutual sympathy played the part of the electric current of our laboratories, and the inarticulate sounds escaping involuntarily from the lips of each worker, served as a means of communication.
In order the better to understand the function of the voice in the education of primitive man, let us look around us and listen. Whenever our senses are excited, and our muscles hard at work, we feel a kind of relief in uttering sounds which in themselves have no meaning. “They are a relief rather than an effort, a moderation or modulation of the quickened breath in its escape through the mouth.”[38]
When men work together, on account of the nature of the task requiring united effort, they are naturally inclined to accompany their occupations with certain more or less rhythmical utterances, which react beneficially on the inward disturbance caused by muscular effort. When a body of men march, row, or wield hammers, they do not keep silence; formerly soldiers sang as they marched to battle; our modern civilisation only caused the substitution of fife and drums for the songs; and our soldiers do not readily abandon these measured accompaniments, which make them less susceptible of fatigue. When savage races dance they make the air resound with measured cadences; our peasants sing while joining in the country dances; the custom of singing during work is more marked amongst those who belong to the races which are less under the influence of civilisation, and are more entirely absorbed by their manual occupation, and with whom personal preoccupation has small hold.
These inarticulate sounds which Noiré has named clamor concomitans and Max Müller clamor significans, uttered by primitive men when working in concert, and always inseparable from acts, could be differentiated in accordance with the acts performed; and at a period when actual speech did not yet exist, they would always have this practical value, they would awaken the remembrance of acts performed in the past, and be repeated in the present, they would thus be instantly understood by all, and readily retained by the memory. But what was there to determine the application of certain sounds to certain occupations? This has not been made clear. Plato, Socrates, and others, have considered that the origin of language might be traced to the imitation of the sounds of nature, and have sought for a resemblance between these sounds and certain letters of the alphabet, but even were it possible here and there to discover a faint analogy, our efforts would only end in contradictions. There seems to be neither necessity nor absolute freedom in the choice of the sounds expressive of these acts, but rather the result of some accident, or of causes of which we are ignorant. In any case these sounds were merely the materials of which language was built.
It will be easily understood that nothing would penetrate more deeply into man’s consciousness, or produce mutual understanding more readily, than acts undertaken and accomplished with the same end in view by a number of men united in a common impulse. During the digging of the caves, the weaving of the nets, the thrashing of the grain, the workers would follow with their eyes the gradual transformation perceptible in these activities, and the sounds which they emitted, or the half-formed words issuing from their lips would be modified or softened at each development in the work; these developments becoming more and more distinct, more and more impressed with their own special characteristic. The idea of individuality must have been very clouded, very confused amongst primitive man; that which one saw the other saw after the same manner; they designed each object in creating it; in this way the world became as a book to them, this book, the result of their combined labour, they learnt to read fluently by means of these sounds and words which increased as they varied. Thus work—man’s good genius—is proved to be the source of what is truly human, viz., reason and language.
Here I will note a curious fact and one which is historical. At a period when writing was unknown in India, the Brahmans had already established the rules of poetical metre, which were originally connected with dancing and music. These rules had been preserved in the Veda. The various Sanscrit names for metre are a witness of the union of corporal and phonetic movements. The root of Khandas, metre, is the same as the Latin scandere in the sense of stepping; vritta, metre, from vrit, verto—to turn, meant originally the last three or four steps of a dancing movement, the turn, the versus, which determined the whole character of dance or of the metre. Trishtubh, the name of a common metre in the Veda, meant three-step, because its turn—its vritta or versus—consisted of three steps, ∪ - -. Thus the innate necessity that man feels of linking the play of the vocal chords to the movement of hands or feet, had been controlled by fixed laws, twenty-four centuries ago, by the Hindoo grammarians; and the most recent theories of modern writers on the subject attest the excellence of these laws. The assertion that it is natural to peasants not to keep silence when working is of very ancient date, but Noiré was the first to deduce scientific data from the fact.